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Caution: Terran players, bring tissues.
Background- I started as a Protoss player. I've played around a good 250 games as Protoss probably. For the most part I was doing well, but having troubles with PvP and PvT. Most of my time goes into watching replays rather than playing though, so my game eventually evolved. However PvT still remained hard for me. Long story short, I made the transition to Zerg. My ELO on Blizzard ladder shot up by around 250 points and I was doing better. To me, personally, Zerg was easier to play for me than Protoss. The cause to this could be from being a Zerg player in SC1, and I highly contribute this to that fact. Another reason is because people still don't quite understand how disadvantageous 1-base play is. I'm decent at defending, and more often than not I was left economically ahead of Protoss and Terran who decided to 4-gate or do some obscure banshee/reaper play.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/ks6Y5.png)
(This was 3 weeks ago, credentials before anyone posts insulting my rank or league. As Chill has said, points are not very intuitive of how good a player is - and way too many players on the strategy forum make judgments off a player's rank before even listening to their opinion. I'm not going to have that here, against me or against anyone else. I'm decent but not that great. However, I've been following the foreign/Korean scene from the start of beta and know a lot about how the game works. I have since then lost the top 200 and stopped actively laddering, but plan to give it my all again with Terran to eventually update this blog.)
Most recently, most of my Zerg play has improved due to watching Sen play. His roach openings evolved my ZvT and kept my ZvP pretty steady. However, the problem I encountered was early aggressors who expand. This is frequent in pro Korean games, as you'll see a Protoss PvZ build up a small force such as 4 stalkers and a zealot and push, then take their natural. Then comes the problem of over-defending, not knowing that they took their natural and do not drone/tech properly, etc. Terran also did this - and to huge benefits. Unlike in beta where Lucifron would 2rax reaper into 2fact hellion into 2port banshee, people have more concrete build orders. Terran has the option of totally putting Zerg on the defense while taking an expand, and it is very hard for the Zerg to come out economically ahead. IdrA has said in an interview (I'd link to it but can't find it, hopefully someone remembers this) that Zerg is pretty much always fucked early-mid game because of this reason. They are almost always behind against good players who put Zerg on the defense but never over-commit.
So it kind of annoyed me, and reading the Teamliquid forums annoyed me more. I'm not going to say Terran is imbalanced, because that isn't the argument I'm here to make. I don't have anything to contribute to make that claim. However, the problem is they are significantly easier to play, in my opinion. Unlike many flamers and trolls in the Starcraft 2 forum, I decided to give up my main race (Zerg) who I dearly enjoy to play just to test out how successful I can get with Terran.
Results- Well it is the second day since I'm solely a Terran player and there have been pretty big changes thus far. From the few games I've laddered with them, my win ratio has increased and my ELO has broke up 100+ in a handful of games. I've also entered a tournament to see how far Terran could get me. The results were pretty decent I'd say:
http://sc.uberwolf.com/2010/09/12/weekly-war-tournament-one-a-new-beginning/
Although a small field and no notable names, expecting to take a tournament in two days with Terran still shouldn't have been like that. What I did in preparation for this tournament was search replays of the most abusive strategies I could find. I ended up getting DeMusliM's replays against Naniwa and DarkForce, and loved his builds. I replicated what he did in just about every game played in the tournament and took it very fast. Even Naniwa feels this is bullshit.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/h5MX2.png)
(Naniwa is famous for his robotics play, which is clearly not able to handle DeMusliM's banshee play. There is only one counter to banshee play, making Protoss delay an expansion and play only one way, reactionary. Without speedlots/storm this build will rip any Protoss in half).
I have a lot to do, and a lot more to practice with Terran. I've practiced with clan mates using Terran yesterday, and I've found that it is just a lot easier than playing Protoss or Zerg against them, where I'd usually lose. But with Terran I managed to win a few games. Also, again, the laddering went very well too. My only games I lost were TvT in my limited sample. And yes, I did play good players. Not usually one to make points an issue, but destroying 1000+ diamond Protoss and Zerg probably is an issue. Maybe my sample size is too small, maybe the players that went against me were high on extasy, but something tells me this isn't going to change overnight. My Terran will still do better than my Protoss or Zerg on ladder, and I feel it will only get better after time.
Maybe it is because I'm just a cheesing noob, maybe it is because I'm naturally good at Terran, I don't know. I just know that if you think you can reach a high diamond level and win a tournament by 4-gating or baneling bust every game, I probably have bad news for you. It really won't happen. The difference between those strategies and the strategies I ripped off DeMusliM is, often times when you scout a 4-gate or baneling bust early enough, you have the proper amount of time to react to it. However, with Terran openings such as marine/banshee or mass reapers, the Protoss and Zerg can know it is coming and still struggle like fuck with it.
I'm staying Terran, and I'll remain Terran even after the patch. Until the early/mid game gets significantly nerfed, I'm happy where I am now. I enjoy playing Zerg more, but I like winning. And instead of populating the Starcraft 2 forum with horrible trash and cries, I did the right thing. If Terran was bothering me so much, why didn't I just shut the fuck up and make the switch? So I did and now I'm owning with minimal effort. I honestly believe in my opinion most players who watch replays and study Terran a bit can make the transition and have improved results by quite a margin with a bit of effort. I'm very interested in Terran players making a transition to Zerg/Protoss, as I have yet to see the success over a large sample size of a Terran doing this. Despite not having a large sample size myself, I think the tournament win is a good collective piece, and definitely plan on updating this with more information as time goes on. Hopefully a natural Terran player would like to run parallel with me in switching to Protoss or Zerg.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/kUDbX.png)
What is the purpose of this blog? I'm not here to start shit (even though the above picture implies otherwise, I just have OCD and need 3 pictures in this blog or else it feels jumbled), I'm here to report on the start of my adventure. And how I feel about the races. For someone who has watched over 120 hours of replays, VODS, and livecasts, I think my opinion does matter. And I want to know if people are doing the same as me. I want to know how you've progressed, or, didn't. My next goal is to break the top 200 again, but this time with Terran. And once I achieve it I'll update this blog and post more thoughts and replays. Until then, people who are making transitions, I want to hear your adventure.
 
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Can I get those demusilm replays? Where are they hidden! I want to abuse those protoss oh so badly.
Please!?
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So you won a small tourney with a finals versus a completely unknown player, semifinals versus an unknown player, are currently barely in the top 150, and you think this post negates the current protoss dominance in korea. You also bash on morrow. Nice spine.
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I was in a similar position, around 250 games played as toss. Switched to terran, beat a 1200 t in my first game with the race outside the campaigns (without cheesing, just viking tank + macro). I could not have beaten the same player with my current PvT. I've switched to T in my 2v2 and the win rate has also increased noticeably.
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On September 13 2010 00:09 SC2Syndicate wrote:
So you won a small tourney with a finals versus a completely unknown player, semifinals versus an unknown player, are currently barely in the top 150, and you think this post negates the current protoss dominance in korea. You also bash on morrow. Nice spine.
Thanks for missing the point of the post.
As I've said it was small and they weren't known players, thanks for reiterating.
I've played two days as Terran -- if this doesn't strike you as odd then there is something definitely off about you. I'm not saying I'm talented or good, I'm saying Terran is easy. And I have a result to show it. I can't honestly say that anyone could switch to Zerg or Protoss for two days with limited knowledge of actually how to play them and dominate diamond players (from what I saw there was roughly anywhere from 400point ~ 1050point diamond players that entered, and I really don't judge players by points as every person's ladder experience is different from another's. Particularly why Blizzard has a secret ELO system.) But if someone can do that with Zerg or Protoss with proof, I'd want to see it. Hence, why I posted this and asking for people's tales of switching.
I've never said anywhere in my post of any claims that Terran is OP - I even said this post isn't about complaining about Terran's OP. Everything I posted in this thread was about how I view the race as easier to play than others at a mid diamond level and below. And I honestly believe the foreigner scene is a bit better than the Korean scene - HuK has dominated a many Koreans, and HuK got owned by MorroW recently. HuK has replays floating around of him dominating CellaWeRRa, a GSL ro64 entry.
I don't bash on MorroW, he even said himself he feels that reapers are OP against IdrA, which I found funny. So I made a little ironic image with the text.
Thanks for judging my skill though, how good are you with all three races?
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Congrats, u have just recruited another player into the dominion.
I'm a 900pts Diamond Zerg (was), after a losing streak, I decided to switch it up and play T for the lols. After about 3 straight wins doing random shit like mass vikings (funny how T strats aren't that 'random' and all seem viable). Finally lost to a 6 pool due to 4getting to turn on auto-repair. Looked up sum builds on forum, and after a quick glance, pulled off 6/8 wins in diamond against 1K+ opponents. My macro was lacking, i had minimal micro (just kiting pretty much). Still managed to pull wins.
Thinking it couldn't POSSIBLY be because of T's imba-ness and just me playing better/vs'ing shit players, i swapped back to Z.
Lost the next 5 games against unfavoured opponents. gg no re.
I"m now officially T.
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On September 13 2010 00:09 SC2Syndicate wrote:
So you won a small tourney with a finals versus a completely unknown player, semifinals versus an unknown player, are currently barely in the top 150, and you think this post negates the current protoss dominance in korea. You also bash on morrow. Nice spine.
Protoss dominance?You mean the 2-7(8?) result of pvt in the gsl?Personally I open phoenix in PvT so I don't have to deal with banshees too much(and if I do it's not too hard  ).
I can't really play terran because when I drop and stuff I remember how frustating it is to play against and feel bad  .
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At least its gonna be patched? Till then I'm also playing terran though, although I feel Terran imba is slightly exaggerated. I've juggled all races and PvT is actually my favorite matchup.
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I main Terran.
I've played Protoss in a lot of custom matches against 1300 Terrans. I'm probably 50% and I've played Protoss about 15 times, whereas the Terrans have about 300 games played as Terran. Most of my losses come from experimenting. I am about 6-2 with a popular fast expansion build.
I have never lost once I get storm.
In the MLG tournament, as well as a few other tournaments, the finals were PvP.
This doesn't at all mean Protoss is imbalanced.
This summary of what I think Protoss is like would suggest that Protoss is imbalanced, regardless of whether I say it is or not.
You say that you don't want to discuss how T is overpowered, then you say that your only losses after switching to Terran were TvT, and that you are playing against people 1k+.
A lot of what you say suggests that Terran is overpowered.
This is how readers are going to interpret it.
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On September 13 2010 01:02 GoSu] wrote:
I main Terran.
I've played Protoss in a lot of custom matches against 1300 Terrans. I'm probably 50% and I've played Protoss about 15 times, whereas the Terrans have about 300 games played as Terran. Most of my losses come from experimenting. I am about 6-2 with a popular fast expansion build.
I have never lost once I get storm.
This is personal experience and can't be argued.
In the MLG tournament, as well as a few other tournaments, the finals were PvP.
This doesn't at all mean Protoss is imbalanced.
This summary of what I think Protoss is like would suggest that Protoss is imbalanced, regardless of whether I say it is or not.
The first thing you said, no, the second thing you said maybe. Although it is very biased because it is not a personal experience or opinion, it is a fact. And facts can be manipulated. Although what you said is true, it is also true that Terran makes up the most of the playing field in tournaments. It is also true Terrans have placed better in tournaments in general. They also hold the most players on every server ladder and have since the beginning. Now that, makes Terran seem overpowered.
You say that you don't want to discuss how T is overpowered, then you say that your only losses after switching to Terran were TvT, and that you are playing against people 1k+.
A lot of what you say suggests that Terran is overpowered.
This is how readers are going to interpret it.
No it doesn't, it makes them seem easy. And what I say is a personal experience. Not everyone will have the same results as me. One person recounting a tale of how their play goes does not argue that the whole race is overpowered.
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On September 13 2010 00:09 SC2Syndicate wrote:
So you won a small tourney with a finals versus a completely unknown player, semifinals versus an unknown player, are currently barely in the top 150, and you think this post negates the current protoss dominance in korea. You also bash on morrow. Nice spine.
Protoss dominance? You mean how 60+% of T's advanced into R32 and about 30% of Z and P did the same? Maybe Protoss does dominate Korea, but you're going to have a hard time arguing it when results like that stand in your way.
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I just read a MorroW interview and I think I have to agree with what he said:
"How was it for you to adapt your StarCraft 1 playstyle to StarCraft 2, and what challenges and differences in the Terran play style occurred?
- It was very easy to adapt and transfer. Terran was the most difficult race in StarCraft 1, and in StarCraft 2 it's considered and is arguably the easier race to play. I find everything quite a lot easier. The strength of a Terran army is not as present as it was in StarCraft 1 though, and that took me a while to adapt to. Talking about Banelings strength and Colossus for example. If you had a battle in StarCraft 1 straight up, Terran was usually stronger, but in StarCraft 2 Terran wins in other ways than the core strength of the army. So that was the only harder thing I think in StarCraft 2."
Even he agrees.
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lol, im a really inactive ladder player, z switched to p in retail, laddered in the first month as a toss and kept in the better half of the division comfortably at 60pc win ratio, last week i started laddering again switched to random and have kept roughly the same winrate.
I think half of it is cos im avoiding my worse matchup [pvp] which is the most common matchup on my skill level. But getting wins as terran hasnt been too difficult either. When i lose i as t i am genuinely outplayed. what i found most surprising was mm micro is far less demanding than i expected. I though itd be like bw where ur shit dies if its left alone for a split second but mm is surprisingly resilient. Whats also really fun is that virtually every terran unit has the versatility to harass or pressure. Is quite a nice change being the agressor throughout the whole game. And mules are ridiculous, if you fe and get 2 orbital, you can afford to cut scvs hard and still have a bigger army than ur opponent.
anyways we shall see how this random playing goes.
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all random, all the time, only way to play
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Please post replays of Demuslim's builds.
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your blog ofc is sort of a brag blog (winning a tournament, saying you barely played terran but got so far). How I am going to respond is a catch-22 because it'll just feed your ego but did you ever consider you're actually a good/decent player and that it's not the race that is OP?
Almost any good player can switch to another race, and if they are solid, they'll be beating a lot of other good players and placing high on ladder, etc. *brag* I myself started to play all Zerg at the end of beta for a different perspective and to see what all the whining was about and I made it into the top 200 in release quite high on a smurf account. *brag over*
Does that mean magically Zerg was very easy too as a race? No. It means the player using it is what matters. So you are playing Terran, and having success...great. Trying to belittle the game balance by saying it's " so easy i just switched and got this far" is pretty dumb imo.
It's just gonna fuel more bandwagon "this is OP, that's OP" which is getting pretty boring to read on TL. I always said it here and there, as well as many others, including day9 in an interview, that with brood war players would make posts/threads/discussion about how they could improve after they just lost, what they could have done better, etc.
Now with SC2, it's "how can I change this part of the game so that I can win more easily." Pretty lame. Just play the game, don't have an agenda to "prove" something is imbalanced cause it probably isn't cause none of us are even that good yet. *rant over*
the fact you say "caution: terran players bring tissues" at the start of your post is pretty much proving you have a cute little balance agenda to sway the forum goers onto the angry mob of "so and so is imba." z.z..z.z.z
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On September 13 2010 10:32 avilo wrote:
Almost any good player can switch to another race, and if they are solid, they'll be beating a lot of other good players and placing high on ladder, etc. *brag* I myself started to play all Zerg at the end of beta for a different perspective and to see what all the whining was about and I made it into the top 200 in release quite high on a smurf account. *brag over*
What happened to the replays? (because I know you don't have them )
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On September 13 2010 10:32 avilo wrote:
your blog ofc is sort of a brag blog (winning a tournament, saying you barely played terran but got so far). How I am going to respond is a catch-22 because it'll just feed your ego but did you ever consider you're actually a good/decent player and that it's not the race that is OP?
I guess it is sort of a brag blog, but I had the intention of creating this blog anyways - hence why I switched to Terran in the first place, even before I decided to show up for the tournament. It was my purpose to play Terran exclusively, see how it went, and blog about it. You're correct though, if I didn't have a good experience with the switch I would not have posted the blog, but that is because there'd be nothing to read. However, my results say otherwise.
And I'm not really that good, hence why I've been stuck hard with Protoss and Zerg. I'm no amazing Z/P, and playing them has been very frustrating for me. Another reason why I planned on doing this, I guess. But I didn't mean to come off that way, I'm usually humble and mannered about wins and good results, unless you want to talk about my USEast days. Otherwise I've never had the mindset that a single win made me the better player, despite what I say. I'd say that is an important quality, especially in a tournament.
But maybe I am more accustomed to Terran's style, I'd say this is true in the case against Protoss. I've never been a good Protoss player in Brood War, and struggled with how to just play their armies in SC2. Terran definitely is more of my style, although I believe Zerg to be more so. I really can't say much more without putting more volume into ladder games, which I plan to do.
Almost any good player can switch to another race, and if they are solid, they'll be beating a lot of other good players and placing high on ladder, etc. *brag* I myself started to play all Zerg at the end of beta for a different perspective and to see what all the whining was about and I made it into the top 200 in release quite high on a smurf account. *brag over*
Does that mean magically Zerg was very easy too as a race? No. It means the player using it is what matters. So you are playing Terran, and having success...great. Trying to belittle the game balance by saying it's " so easy i just switched and got this far" is pretty dumb imo.
I really don't think the game is that unbalanced. I'm making the same argument people tried to make in Brood War. People joked that if you want to get B- on ICCup easy, just switch to Protoss. I'm pretty much making a mock out of Terran in the same way - want to get high diamond? Switch to Terran. Although the images I included are joking about Terran being OP, that isn't really how I feel. How I do feel would turn into many blocks of boring paragraphs of why I feel Terran destroys the early game dynamics of SC2. Otherwise I don't really think there will ever become a time and place that Terran becomes undefeated, especially with Protoss and Zerg finding better ways to deal with Terran aggression more and more every tournament we see.
It's just gonna fuel more bandwagon "this is OP, that's OP" which is getting pretty boring to read on TL. I always said it here and there, as well as many others, including day9 in an interview, that with brood war players would make posts/threads/discussion about how they could improve after they just lost, what they could have done better, etc.
Now with SC2, it's "how can I change this part of the game so that I can win more easily." Pretty lame. Just play the game, don't have an agenda to "prove" something is imbalanced cause it probably isn't cause none of us are even that good yet. *rant over*
the fact you say "caution: terran players bring tissues" at the start of your post is pretty much proving you have a cute little balance agenda to sway the forum goers onto the angry mob of "so and so is imba." z.z..z.z.z
Again, that isn't the issue I'm making at all. I thought this would be nostalgic to forum goers who enjoyed the very early seasons of ICCup when Protoss murdered the ladder's C+, B-, B, and B+ ranks for the most part. The influx of Koreans added even more. I'm sure it wasn't as ridiculous as the Terran numbers are now on Bnet 2.0, as recent polls on Teamliquid and other sites have suggested, but it is just about the same situation in my eyes.
Yeah I did start a little flame initiation with asking them to bring tissues though. But another reason why I wanted to make this blog and switch to Terran was from the large amount of posts on the strategy forum and otherwise of Terran players trying to make claim of how "I always lose to void rays" or "storms are always owning me, how can you think Terran is overpowered? Fucking Protoss is", etc. To summarize it, there are a LOT of these posts. And no, I don't think it is okay that Protoss and Zerg make those posts either, I'm not being biased. But I personally feel people who want to say that a race is harder than another, or that one is more overpowered than another is a big fat fucking hypocrite. Ironically, so was I. I thought Terran had it easier in my opinion, so instead of combating these posts and making bad responses to people who trashed the forum this way, I did switch. And I did want to make this blog if I had success, just to point out, 'hey, I switched from my race to another to prove to myself that this is more easily to accomplish.' If I would have switched to Terran and yielded bad results, it would have never made it to blog form and I would have said, 'Maybe it isn't as easy as it looks, maybe I should improve my game, etc'. Likewise people who want to shout OP should maybe play that race, study it exclusively for two weeks, and then try to formulate an opinion.
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Due to popular demand, I'll remake the images and post them here so they won't infer that I believe Terran to be OP. No, they don't make sense, and no they aren't humorous. However, they will be more appropriate for the discussion of this blog rather than for everyone to miss my point.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/m1K6L.png)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/v9VmL.png)
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EPT
